Manners for bilingual kids

One of the challenges I've found in bringing up children speaking English in Spain is that they need to be more polite when in English-mode. Say "What!?" when you didn't understand something works fine in Spanish, but doesn't work so well in more up-tight cultures. Getting them to say "Please" and "Thank you" is practically impossible. It's still kind of cute when my 3 year old says "What? What?" and "Come on!", but I imagine it will become less cute as the years progress. My kids are also sounding a bit too Canadian, with the Catalan multipurpose "Eh" creeping into their speech patterns. ("Huh" is also becoming a favorite)

Luckily they are still young enough so that the "casual-use-of-swearwords-for-emphasis" isn't an issue yet, but probably will in the next couple years.

Private school life insurance scam

We asked the school the other day what this mysterious €20 life insurance charge was for on our monthly bill. It turns out that the school decided to opt-in all the families into a policy and charge the parents for it (and never explain it or tell us what the benefits are, etc).

What exactly do you receive for this? If the father (for €10 per child per month) or either (for €18 a month) dies, then they will pay the tuition for the rest of the year. That's it.

Want to know what a complete rip off this is? For $8.22 per month, I can buy a $100,000 10 year term life back in the US, which should be enough to keep the kids in a good school until they graduate, and still have a bit left over for college.

Happy Sant Medir day

An unfortunately rainy holiday day is driving the kids up the wall and me to run away to the computer for some peace and quiet.

Luckily a classmate is having a birthday party at the always popular Planeta Magic so at least they'll get rid of some of their nervous energy before they go to bed.

Never having been a big bean fan, Severus of Barcelona's "bean miracle" doesn't really do it for me.

It's got a nice tie-in to Sant Cugat though, since that was where Severus was arrested (and killed in a pretty brutal fashion) after fleeing from Barcelona due to the Diocletian persecution (back when the Romans were still doing the Christians + lions thing).

Catalunya, not just a good idea, it's the law

According to decree 78/1991, section 3.3, all place names in guides and descriptions of Catalunya for use in Catalunya must use the official Catalan spelling. No more Catalonia, Cataluña, or Catalogne. Katalonien is most definitely verboten. (and this guy is definitely going to jail)

There's an exception if you live in the Aran Valley, they are allowed to call it Catalonha.

Does a blog from Sant Cugat for Santcugatencs qualify? It's not clear (there is an exception for textbooks used in schools that are written in a foreign language), but to be on the safe side, I will try to use the official spelling.

So there, Tom. :)

Bob Esponja Pantalones Cuadrados

I've heard he's quite popular here. The name just cracks me up in Spanish... it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Adventures in ink-refilling

I had the bad luck this weekend that my printer ran out of ink while printing the pictures for my son's homework assignment. Being a Sunday, buying a new cartridge was out of the question. (Maremagnum is the only mall I know that's open on Sundays but doesn't have any tech stores).

In the US, I would ask the neighbors, but given that our current relationship is still stuck at the "acknowledge existence if we accidentally run into each other" stage, it didn't feel appropriate.

First thing I tried was to resuscitate an old HP printer I had in the garage, but due to having been off for two years it decided that the (newly unwrapped)ink cartridges had expired and were no longer good. I popped out the battery that powers the internal clock, giving the printer amnesia and thinking it was the year 2000. Then it complained that the scanner was broken and wouldn't start up, so I disassembled the scanner, cleaned it, put it back together and... still the same error.

Then I remembered that I had an old Becker color ink refilling kit lying around that I had never tried out. It was for a different brand of printer, but I was desperate.

It came with:

• A metal pokey-thing for making a hole in the cartridge
  
• Three bottles of color ink
  
• Three syringes for inject the ink into the hole
  
• A set of rubber gloves
  

It was surprisingly easy, and my son's homework assignment was saved.

From now on, I'm buying my ink by the liter.

Intra-EU immigration

The previous post was more inspired by this paper on the implications of intra-EU migration, rather than any unconcious attempt to goad Catalan nationalists.

...due to the freedom of movement within the union of its citizens, there now exists three separate classifications of minorities within the states of the European Union: ethnic minority, internal migrant and immigrant. The EU has had varying levels of apathy towards its responsibility to any of these groups, leaving much of the care for them in the hands of the state.

While unique, they share many similar characteristics and issues for the state. As White notes: “it is accepted in almost every immigration country that the existence of immigrant or ethnic minority populations necessitates consideration of their particular needs in various spheres of service provision such as education, welfare, health and housing”. In fact the term minority itself can be used to describe any of the three types of groups.

This ambiguity is seen in the wording of the European Convention on Human Rights which describes a minority as “a group inferior in number to the rest of the population and whose members share in their will to hold on to their culture, traditions, religion, or language” What this convention illustrates is that the classification of what it is and what is not a minority is not for the minority to decide. It is the majority group in the state that will decide who belongs and who does not.
[...]
It was not until the decision to expand the EU by 10 East European members by 2004 that the West Europeans became concerned about minority rights within the EU. There was an expectation that with the opening of the democratic process and ending of totalitarian rule in Eastern Europe there would be a flood of ethnic violence similar to what was seen in Yugoslavia. As a result of these concerns, the EU for the first time made protections of minorities a part of the accession process.

Copenhagen criteria and Catalonia

When the EU decided to adopt the Copenhagen criteria for determining who could enter the EU, it set somewhat of a double standard on the protection of minority languages.

New EU members would have to adhere to the following framework (Convention for the Protection of National Minorities 1994 ):

• Article 10: Right to use the minority language in administration and justice
  
• Article 11: Right to display local names, street names and other topographical indications in the minority language
  
• Article 12: Right to learn and receive instruction in one’s minority language
  

The double standard being that existing Euro members are not be bound by these rules.

Due to being part of Spain (which gets to play by the old rules), Catalonia can ignore these provisions and also pretty much ignore its(substantial) Spanish speaking minority. However, as its own country and (presumably) new EU member, it would be unlikely that these rules could be ignored, and Catalonia could find itself in the position where it needs to provide more services in Spanish that it currently does.

Multi-speed Europe or multi-speed USA

One of the reasons I've heard that the Euro cannot stay together is that the countries involved have such different rates of economic growth so that it is impossible to have a coherent monetary policy. Interest rate policies that are suitable to some Euro-members might cause bubbles or stagnant growth in the remaining countries.

So how "different" are these rates, really? If you take the last couple years of growth GDP in the Euro area, you end up with a standard deviation of approximately 1.3-1.7% (sorry to statistics majors for abusing standard deviation).

What about, say, the grand old USA? Doing the same calculations on a state-by-state basis, the GSP (Gross State Product) growth varies with a standard deviation of about 2-2.5%.

So the US manages to survive on a much more varied set of regional economies with a single currency and interest rate policy.

Even if you take into account the ability of the federal government in the US to shift around money, the imbalances tend to mirror approximately the same amounts of money that are shifted around by the EU in structural funds.